The library · The matching tests
Tara kuta
the third test of the ashta kuta marriage matching system, counted between the two nakshatras
What the tradition reads
Tara sorts the relation between any two lunar mansions into one of nine positions, counted from one to the other and then reduced by dividing by nine, each of the nine positions carrying its own name and its own reading, Janma, Sampat, Vipat, Kshema, Pratyari, Sadhana, Vadha, Mitra and Ati Mitra in their usual order. Read for a single chart, a person's own janma tara is simply their birth star, the starting point every later count of auspicious and inauspicious days for that person is measured from, used in the older calendar making for choosing dates favourable to that individual quite apart from any question of matching. Applied to two charts, tara is counted twice, once from each native's star to the other's, since the count is not always symmetrical, and the two resulting positions are read together. Sampat, Kshema, Sadhana, Mitra and Ati Mitra are read as auspicious, Vipat, Pratyari and Vadha as difficult, with the standing of Janma itself treated as ambiguous depending on the school. Where one direction lands favourably and the other does not, a common practice scores the test as a half rather than as a clean pass or fail, on the reasoning that the couple's fortunes run well from one side and less well from the other, a partial truth rather than a contradiction.
The story
The nine tara names read almost as a small story in their own right, moving from Janma, birth itself, through Sampat, prosperity, and Vipat, calamity, toward Kshema, safety, Pratyari, the enemy, Sadhana, the achiever, Vadha, destruction, and finally Mitra and Ati Mitra, friend and great friend, as though the sequence were rehearsing an entire life's turns of fortune in nine steps before starting the circuit again on the tenth mansion counted. The scheme long predates its use in marriage matching, the same nine fold count is the backbone of muhurta, the older art of picking an auspicious day for any undertaking, in which a day falling on a person's own Vipat or Vadha star from their birth nakshatra is avoided for anything important, regardless of marriage. Marriage matching simply asks the same question of two birth stars instead of one birth star and one calendar date, treating the partner, in effect, as a day the tradition must first check is safe to proceed on.
Written from
Corpus key kuta:tara.